Court weighs cell phone privacy issues with public safety

By Kathleen Haughney

TALLAHASSEE -- A Broward man is now the subject of a privacy case before the Florida Supreme Court on whether the police can track a person's real-time movements via a cell phone signal without violating the target's right to privacy.

And the court, like many others around the country, is "struggling" with it, said Justice Barbara Pariente.

The court Monday morning heard the case of Sean Alvin Tracey, a Broward man, who in 2009 was found guilty of cocaine possession, a judgment upheld by an appeals court. But Tracey's lawyers have argued that police in the case erred by tracking his cell phone data to catch him with drugs.

That tracking was a violation of a person's right to privacy, said attorney Tajiana Ostapoff.

"A cell phone by its very nature is carried on a person’s person, including into his home and into other offices," she said.

A similar case is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last month, the Obama administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow warantless cell phone searches. Though, in that specific case, the court is looking at whether law enforcement could ask a personf or their phone and rifle through text messages or phone numbers.

The Florida case seemed perplexing at many times for members of the Florida Supreme Court.

Justice Fred Lewis joked that when the laws were originally written, people had "tin cans with string."

A lawyer for the state, Melynda Melear, acknowledged that the laws did need to be updated and that courts around the country were divided. But, she also argued that the cell phone tracking data used in Tracey's case could be considered historical, which has generally been allowed by the courts.

A trial court, however, did refer to it as real-time data.

"It’s historic because the phone company gets it first and has to relay it," she said.